用ML和人在回路中构建Airbnb类别

By: Mihajlo Grbovic, Ying Xiao, Pratiksha Kadam, Aaron Yin, Pei Xiong, Dillon Davis, Aditya Mukherji, Kedar Bellare, Haowei Zhang, Shukun Yang, Chen Qian, Sebastien Dubois, Nate Ney, James Furnary, Mark Giangreco, Nate Rosenthal, Cole Baker, Bill Ulammandakh, Sid Reddy, Egor Pakhomov

作者Mihajlo Grbovic, Ying Xiao, Pratiksha Kadam, Aaron Yin, Pei Xiong, Dillon Davis, Aditya Mukherji, Kedar Bellare, Haowei Zhang, Shukun Yang, Chen Qian, Sebastien Dubois, Nate Ney, James Furnary, Mark Giangreco, Nate Rosenthal, Cole Baker, Bill Ulammandakh, Sid Reddy, Egor Pakhomov

Figure 1. Browsing listings by categories: Castles, Desert, Design, Beach & Countryside

图1.按类别浏览列表。城堡,沙漠,设计,海滩和乡村

25 Years of Online Travel Search

在线旅游搜索的25年

Online travel search hasn’t changed much in the last 25 years. The traveler enters her destination, dates, and the number of guests into a search interface, which dutifully returns a list of options that best meet the criteria. Eventually, Airbnb and other travel sites made improvements to allow for better filtering, ranking, personalization and, more recently, to display results slightly outside of the specified search parameters–for example, by accommodating flexible dates or by suggesting nearby locations. Taking a page from the travel agency model, these websites also built more “inspirational” browsing experiences that recommend popular destinations, showcasing these destinations with captivating imagery and inventory (think digital “catalog”).

在过去的25年里，在线旅游搜索并没有什么变化。旅行者在搜索界面上输入她的目的地、日期和客人数量，搜索界面会尽职尽责地返回一个最符合标准的选项列表。最终，Airbnb和其他旅游网站进行了改进，以实现更好的过滤、排名和个性化，最近还显示了略微超出指定搜索参数的结果--例如，通过适应灵活的日期或建议附近的地点。借鉴旅行社的模式，这些网站还建立了更加 "鼓舞人心 "的浏览体验，推荐受欢迎的目的地，用迷人的图像和库存展示这些目的地（想想数字 "目录"）。

Figure 2. Airbnb Destination Recommendation Example

图2.Airbnb目的地推荐实例

The biggest shortcoming of these approaches is that the traveler must have a specific destination in mind. Even travelers who are flexible get funneled to a similar set of well-known destinations, reinforcing the cycle of mass tourism.

这些方法的最大缺点是，旅行者必须有一个特定的目的地。即使是那些灵活...